Memories of Carnegie School of Home Economics

May 28, 2017 Letters

Dear Editor,
How lovely to hear that the Carnegie School of Home Economics is still alive and well. The 2-year day student graduates were snapped up by the expatriate households and earned an excellent reputation in their jobs.
I remember the evening courses I took at the Carnegie school in the 1950s, which served me well in later life. I took two cookery courses, and then a dressmaking course. Both of great advantage to me. In my class, at one ‘every day cookery’ session, we were introduced to the technique of adding a parched and ground spice to our curry dish. In my brown stew, usually made with beef, the mixed spices of parsley, celery and thyme, produced a unique taste. Later on, when I ran my own household, visitors always commented on how ‘different’ my curry and brown stew tasted. I used both fish and meat to make the brown stew, using the same mix of spices.
One evening during a cookery class break, a few of us nipped into the class next door and copied the “black cake” recipe from their blackboard. I have used this recipe every Christmas since. In London, in the 1970s, I used the recipe to make a Guyanese visitor’s wedding cake, and offered a slice to my next door “Brit” neighbour. She sang the praises of the cake to anyone who would listen for a long time afterwards, saying it was the best wedding cake she had ever tasted – she was twice my age and her husband was a baker!
She asked what made it so dark (a mixture of molasses – black treacle to the “Brits”) and stout. In Guyana, we used burnt sugar to darken the cake, but manufactured treacle was easier. Incidentally, I passed on the ‘treacle tip’ to fellow “Brit” tourists on one Caribbean holiday – now it is a regular ingredient in some stores’ dark cakes. I think the subtle difference in the Guyanese cake is that we grind the fruit before using.
When my son was about 12 years old, one Christmas his Muslim classmate, with his younger brother, dropped in one afternoon to have a chat. My son offered them a slice of my black cake. They wolfed it down and asked twice for more. He obliged. Later back home, their parents could not understand why their boys kept falling asleep. They were not very pleased when they learnt about their “cake experience”. However, it did them no long term harm – they are now both Chartered Accountants! Well done, Carnegie.
Geralda Dennison

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Memories of Carnegie School of Home Economics

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